


A Very Dubois Christmas

by Rivestra



Category: Medium
Genre: Family, Gen, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-16
Updated: 2010-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-13 17:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivestra/pseuds/Rivestra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe's Christmas shopping for his girls. His <i>psychic</i> girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Dubois Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threeguesses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, threeguesses! (I promise it's not a Dubois orgy!) Much thanks to my marvelous betas (you know who you are!), you rock, darlin'!

Our story begins, as so many of these things do, with a hero.

Joe Dubois works hard. He's smart and caring and wiser than many, many men, though certainly not all. He adores his family. He dotes on every one of them, even his wife, even when she calls him at work, a bare week before Christmas, to announce that she's been called to testify in a huge mess of a murder trial and he's going to have to handle all the Christmas shopping.

The Christmas shopping Joe thought Allison had already done.

Now, Joe's not adverse to Christmas shopping, exactly. He's happily mingled with the crowds to buy a present for his boss already. Secret Santa makes him smile, even though he has trouble keeping it under $20. In years past, he's even stoically braved the mall alone on Christmas Eve (to find a gift for Allison's second cousin, Betsy), and emerged humming carols, his holiday spirit intact.

It's just… this is _his_ family we're talking about here.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

Bridgette gets her friend, Gennifer, to do her dirty work.

Joe is on carpool that week, and all week he hears about nothing except the virtues of nice, solid, metal cameras (like the $500 model Bridgette keeps leaving open in the top window in his browser) as opposed to cheap, effervescent (their word), crappy, _plastic_ cameras (like the $95 model Joe's had his eye on for Bridgette).

Gennifer's father works for _Vogue_ , and, if spending all day taking pictures of fashion models isn't enough reason for Joe to hate the man, then passing an encyclopedic snobbery of all things photographic on to his daughter certainly is.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

Ariel has the decency to call for herself. At least, Joe tells himself it's decency that motivates her because that's a much more charitable thing to think than the alternative, and as it's Christmas-time, charity and faith are the order of the day. The call goes something like this:

"Dad?" Which is how they all start, unless they're from Allison.

Another, "Dad?" Ariel sounds irritated, and Joe can't, for the life of him, figure out what he's done this time.

He stares at the spinning hourglass on his screen and thinks (uncharitably) about the mercurial moods of teenagers. "Yeah, Ariel?" She doesn't say anything, so he prompts, "I'm just about to go into a meeting, honey. What's going on?"

"Oh. I don't want to bother you, Dad. I was just thinking…" Her words convey no concern, and she goes on blithely, "I was just thinking about how… you remember how much I loved Fall Out Boy, like, years and years ago?"

It was only this summer that she'd begged him to visit her friend in Santa Fe so she could see the band play. Joe grunts affirmatively into the phone and clicks idly on _cancel_.

The hourglass keeps on spinning.

"I was just thinking about how funny it is how things change. I mean, I really, really loved them, but now…" Joe clicks the mouse button again, harder this time – maybe it didn't register his first press? – and keeps clicking. "Now, I just really think they _suck_ , Dad. I mean who listens to _them_ anymore?" He punches the backspace key. "Nobody does, not when there's _good_ bands out there like Panic at the Disco and…" Is that even a real name? He smashes the backspace over and over. "…My Chemical Romance out there." She pauses for a breath, finally, but his break doesn't last. "Say, _Daddy_ , did you know that MCR is in town this January? Well, kind of. I mean, it's Sedona but, it's MCR…" Ariel's voice squeaks a bit on the meaningless acronym, and Joe winces. "…and that's practically in our back yard!"

She takes a deep breath and rushes out in a calmer tone, "Anyways, that's all, Daddy. I was just feeling all nostalgic and wanted to talk to you but I'm done now and you really need to get back to work, right." Her pause is barely discernible, nowhere near long enough for him to edge in a syllable. "Okay, so, bye, Daddy. I love you!"

Ticketmaster's (Joe refuses to call it Live Nation, even if that seems to be its name now) transaction complete chirp is loud in his suddenly quiet office. Joe takes several deliberate breaths – in through his nose, counts to ten, then out through his mouth – before clicking over to Stub Hub.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

Marie is easy, if you consider hours spent reading half the books in the local Borders' children's section easy, and Joe, most emphatically, does.

He walks away from the mall with a bag full of generic toys (from her letter to Santa, hand delivered earlier that day at that very same mall) and a stack full of Babar books he'd all but forgotten from his own childhood.

That night as he tucks her in, she whispers, "Don't worry, Daddy, I love elephants, even if they _do_ wear silly clothes," and if Joe holds her a little longer than usual, well, really, who can blame him?

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

Joe thinks his luck is finally changing when he makes it all the way through the purchase without his phone ringing. He lets the ruby pendant drop into its velvet nest and actually manages to get his wallet put away before his phone bleats impatiently at him.

An involuntary sign escapes him. "Just a minute," he says to the clerk, knowing it will be futile to let the man wrap the necklace up before taking the call.

"Dad?" Bridgette's voice is too high, and she sounds breathless; alarm bells start buzzing at the base of Joe's neck.

"Yeah, Bridge? Is everything okay? Didn't Mrs. Wazinsky pick you up?" He deeply wishes that her being stranded isn't the best scenario he can come up with right now. Incipient panic wars with the expectation of frustration in his mind.

"I'm _fine_ , Daddy." She draws in a fast breath before continuing in a rush, "It's just… Ariel can't find her sweater."

Ah, Joe thinks, so it's going to be frustration, then. He lets it settle over him comfortably as she continues.

"You know, the one she likes so much because it's soft and such a pretty blue, almost like sapphires…" A scuffling sound makes its way through Joe's earpiece, but the pause is short and Bridgette is only a little winded as she comes back to finish with an entirely illogical, "Do you think Mommy might have borrowed it? She likes blue so much, especially such a dark blue, almost like a gemstone…"

Joe presses the heel of his free hand into his forehead, right between his eyes. The pendant glints redly at him from the counter, mocking. He loses a few of Bridgette's words before time snaps back into place, but that hardly matters. His voice sounds tired even to himself when he replies, "You'd have to ask Mommy that, Bridgette."

Bridge babbles on about the sweater while Joe shakes his head at the clerk and slides the pendant back across the counter. He mouths _I need to return this,_ and fishes his wallet back out.

Bridgette's still extolling the virtues of blue in his ear while he buckles himself into the car, but he leaves the sapphire pendant inside too.

He really should have known better. In two decades of marriage, he's never managed to surprise Allison.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

Joe's luck does finally begin to change as he passes a perfectly ordinary, and therefore dreadfully depressing, strip mall. A Starbucks, bustling with Christmas Eve shoppers, is nestled on the corner, and this is what draws Joe's attention initially. He tosses his cell phone (which he knows he shouldn't have been using while driving, much less shouting at his assistant through) onto the seat and flips the car around, determined to see if sugar and caffeine can improve his day.

He doubts it though. The last few days have strained his faith in many things, the least of which being the restorative powers of corporate coffee.

Manic holiday drivers force him into a little used corner of the lot to park. Off to his left is what used to be the anchor store, a dilapidated Walgreens decorated for the season in garish garlands and blinking lights that buzz green and red across the parking lot. To his right there is a rather shady-looking check cashing facility, followed by several smaller shops and a café of the will-offer-you-chili-verde-on-your-pancakes variety called, for reasons unknown (as they do not serve pie), Edna's Pie Shack.

Straight ahead of him, 10 feet in front of the nose of his car, is a tiny bookstore lit up like a jewel for the season. Now this, this is what breaks Joe's intent on coffee, as you'll understand immediately if you grew up loving local bookstores (as Joe did) and mourn them now (as Joe does) as the endangered species they've become.

Joe can't _not_ go inside. The attraction is absolutely magnetic, as we knew it would be.

We watch as he lingers near the door, flipping through old sci-fi paperbacks, slick issues of ultra-modern _Omni_ and carefully collected pulp volumes of _Amazing Stories_. Max prowls over and investigates Joe's feet, signaling approval by winding through Joe's legs in a figure eight without breaking Joe's rapt fascination. All told, Joe spends almost forty-five minutes there before moving toward the back of the store, drawn inexorably (if slowly) toward the Santa's Workshop exhibit… and me.

I give my best jolly chuckle when he jumps, suddenly discovering I'm real. I watch him decide it doesn't matter that I'm actually a woman, just a girl really, in a fluffy white batting of a beard, and I like him all the more for the ease with which he does so.

I pat my lap invitingly and he chuckles, as I knew he would, his smile washing the last of the bad mood from his face.

"It's okay," I say softly. "I know what you're looking for, Joe Dubois."

His eyes drop downward, looking for a non-existent nametag before he says, "Santa… right. And I bet I'm not supposed to question."

I give him an eye-twinkling smile and a non-answer, "You can always _ask_ , Joe, but it's not gonna help you any, sweetie."

He pushes his overlong hair out of his eyes and squints at me. "Sweetie, really? I'm what, twice your age?"

"You wanna kibitz or you wanna find out what Santa's got for you," I wink at him and pointedly use his name again, "Joe?" I rummage ostentatiously in my sack for a moment before coming up with a brown paper bag. It's labeled (how else am I supposed to keep these things straight?) with block letters in black sharpie, JOE DUBOIS. I hold it out for him, far enough that he doesn't have to get too close.

I needn't have worried; Joe snatches the bag away from me and tears into it, grinning like a little boy. A moment later that grin's still in place but he's looking up at me with confused eyes, clutching one of the four packets in his hand.

"Have a little faith in Santa," I whisper, then make my exit while he's looking back down at his prizes.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

On his way home, Joe ducks into a Best Buy. His phone buzzes in his pocket like an angry wasp, so he turns it off. It takes him 20 minutes to settle on a $150 camera (which is out of stock), another ten to decide to splurge on a $200 model (which is _also_ out of stock), then ten more to track down a salesperson who'll give him more than an inventory check. That guy points him at a $325, metal-bodied model and, when Joe makes a face, quickly adds that it's both in stock and 50% off.

After a bit more than an hour in line, right before he's up at the register, Joe spies Live Nation gift cards on the display rack and snags a couple, blessing modern conveniences. Another 90 minutes pass and he's out of the jewelry store across the street, a pretty little three stone (one for each girl) sapphire ring in his pocket.

He keeps the brown bag tucked under his arm the whole time.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

Ariel beats him home, and she brings dinner. Bridgette calls for a ride just as he remembers to turn his phone back on, so he grabs her from her friend's (not Gennifer's, thankfully) on his way to fetch Marie.

Allison is still at the courthouse and likely to be very late, so they tuck in to Ariel's feast just the four of them. After dinner, there's ice cream, and he and Ariel indulge in made-up call-and-answer carols that make Marie laugh and Bridgette scowl until she can't manage anymore and suddenly they're all laughing.

They pull all the furniture cushions off onto the floor and watch sappy movies until they fall asleep in a big pile, and this is how Allison finds them, reflected tree lights bathing her family parti-colored in the pre-dawn. She shrugs off her coat, kicks off her shoes and slides into the pile between Ariel and Marie. The girls barely stir, but Joe reaches sleepily for her hand.

Allison is asleep before he's finished tucking their hands under the blanket.

~()~ ~()~ ~()~

In the morning there're Santa-shaped pancakes with chocolate chips and fresh squeezed orange juice that they all take turns pressing. There's laughter and sputtering over deformed Santas. There's genuine joy and much pretending of surprise when opening gifts.

Eventually, Bridgette finds the sack under the tree and turns to Joe, clearly not recognizing the bag and, just as clearly, very confused by this development. Joe laughs and takes it from her, reaching inside and quickly tossing a packet at each of his girls.

They all stare at the lurid colors and 50's sci-fi chic for a few moments, taking in the bold boasts of the packaging:

 **BRACELET OF ISIS – PSI-NEUTRALIZING DEVICE!** >

* GUARANTEED TO SHIELD YOUR MIND FROM UNWANTED PSYCHIC CONTACT!  
* SELF-CHARGING! PROVIDES UP TO THREE HOURS OF PROTECTION ON A SINGLE CHARGE OF AMBIENT PSI ENERGY!  
* COLLECT ALL SIX TODAY!

  
 **ISIS POWER!**

And then they all, to a one, dissolve into giggles.

 **  
_~fin~_   
**


End file.
